CALIFORNIA: What Are We Going To Do With California?

By Greg Penglis, on December 20th, 2016

When I moved here over 30 years ago, this was a fabulous state. It had about half the population, the towns in the San Francisco Bay Area were actual separate towns, the highways carried the traffic pretty well, there was adequate water in the reservoirs despite a three year repeating rain and drought cycle, and the governors were Republican. Illegal aliens back then weren’t as big a problem. They couldn’t get driver licenses, or vote because no one checked I.D., or be harbored as fugitives by “sanctuary cities.” Racist advocacy groups such as La Raza were no where near as prominent, students didn’t march down the streets behind flags of Mexico demanding that the vote for President be overturned, and we weren’t all identified, divided, and ruled as separate skin colors by our state government.

True story. When I first moved to the Bay Area I was a white guy living in a predominantly black and rather sketchy neighborhood of Oakland. My best friends in my apartment building were two gay black men who lived together. I sometimes shopped at a black muslim bakery called “Your Black Muslim Bakery.” I never once felt unwelcome in the neighborhood. I used to bring my acoustic guitar to the laundromat where I would meet older retired black men and we would make up blues songs on the spot. Yeah there was some alcohol in brown bags. Try to imagine a 20 something white guy, playing blues, with these incredible black men, their large hands partially crippled from decades of hard physical work, all joining in making up blues verses from their lives, in a small laundromat, on an obscure street corner, in a nondescript part of Oakland. You don’t know how many times I wish I had recorded those amazing and spontaneous sessions. But that was never the point. It was just something we all enjoyed and did for ourselves. I also know, given how things have changed, that the experience I had when I first came to California might never be repeated again today given how divided we are now.

Since I moved here the population has pretty much doubled. There are no separate towns in the Bay Area as the spaces in between have all been filled in. The highways have not increased in number and barely in size, and the traffic is always miserable. There have been no new reservoirs or sources of water created and droughts are devastating. Illegal aliens have more rights, services, and government protection than American citizens, lawful immigrants, and American criminals. The governor is a devout Democrat, as is virtually every office holder and government worker in the state. The election rules are such that two Democrats can be, and all too often are, the only ones on the ballot for offices in the General Election. And don’t get me started on the corruption, over-spending, and incompetence that resulted in the new Bay Bridge section taking from after the earthquake of 1989 until 2014 to be built, when the entire original Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge were both built simultaneously between 1933 and 1937, and with only American steel.

Side note on the water. If the feds and our Governor would stop screwing around with the reservoirs and the fresh water flowing into the Delta from the Sierras, and if the farmers could get the water they need to feed us instead of flushing the fresh water out the Delta to the ocean to allegedly save a fish analogous to a pizza topping that is being gobbled up by non-native species anyway, we wouldn’t have a water problem. But that’s California. The other problem, and it’s huge, is that Southern California because of its larger population, is happy to vote itself lots of Northern California water. Happy to vote themselves pretty much everything else they want as well.

You all know by now that the entire lead in the popular plurality vote for Clinton (she never reached a majority) is the result of, you guessed it — California. There is no way to know how many of those votes are from illegal aliens because California gives away drivers licenses to anyone who can get to a DMV. No questions asked. And then they get immediately registered to vote. I wonder if the forms come pre-marked for the Democrat Party, or someone at the DMV fills party preference in, but that’s just idle speculation on my part. However I am sure illegals overwhelmingly register and vote for Democrats.

So what is the effect of all this? Well, California has become an aberration in the United States. California doesn’t want the United States, and the United States doesn’t particularly want California. Millions of working middle and lower middle income families and people are leaving California because it doesn’t work for them anymore. I’m out of here as soon as I secure my new career. The poor are happy to stay because there are so many rich people and liberals in government to support them. The rich are happy to stay because they have so much money that the extortion taxes and cost of living doesn’t affect them. But for everyone else, it is a problem. So California will continue to attract the very rich, the very poor, and the very illegal.

Is the solution for California to exit the Union, the so-called CalExit option? I don’t think so. We fought a civil war in part to decide the question of whether we would exist as a single union, or as a union and a confederacy. So this is not a question to be taken lightly. Yet there is a movement to put the secession of California from the Union on the 2018 ballot. It will take more than that. The Business Insider reports that it will take a Constitutional Amendment to allow California to leave the Union. The Amendment could also come from a Convention of States, which is a convention to consider certain amendments to the Constitution which are figured out in advance, to strictly limit the Convention of States to consider only those amendments, and not any other changes to the Constitution. If you have a Constitutional Convention, which is something entirely different, then the whole Constitution is open to rewriting, and that would be the worst kind of disaster imaginable, yet that’s what many Leftists want. Keep separate in your mind the difference between a Convention of States, and a Constitutional Convention.

I don’t think CalExit will happen because California needs the Union and the Federal Government. If California were a separate nation, it would have to defend its own borders. As if marijuana smoking, metrosexual, millennials, who need safe spaces when they don’t get their way in an election could actually do that. California also needs or will need, federal money or bankruptcy laws, because Leftists are incapable of any sense of responsibility, which is why they think nothing of bankrupting entire states or nations. The Union also needs California. If we have one huge state that is so morally depraved that illegal aliens are more valued than citizens, then we need that one state to attract and keep as many illegal aliens as possible, thus sparing the rest of the country. The function of California for the Union is that it becomes the repository of illegal aliens, the poor who need maximum state benefits, and the rich who are too stupid or ideologically driven to care about the costs of any of this.

I also don’t think California, to quote the Left, is “sustainable” as it currently exists. It’s too big and too “diverse” (there I go again) to be run as a single state. The big reason is that so much of the population is completely unrepresented. There is more here than just the socialist Left. But the conservatives are outnumbered, and are generally located in the more suburban, farm based, rural, or mountainous parts of the state. The big cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Sacramento, belong to the Democrat Left. Unfortunately if you are not in one of the big Democrat cities, then you get outvoted in the capitol in Sacramento. The state assembly members and senators from Los Angeles basically control the state. This actually is the perfect microcosm of the Electoral College. Just as California should not determine the fate of the whole nation, neither should Los Angeles determine the fate of California. So what to do?

There has been a longstanding movement since before World War One to take some part of the rural counties in the north of California, and possibly some of the counties in the south of Oregon, and form the new State of Jefferson. There would be no secession involved, these folks want to remain solidly in the Union, adding a new state, and a new star on our flag. This could be done with an act of Congress. See Article IV, Section 3. And also with the concurrence of the state legislatures involved. Jefferson would then have their own representatives and two senators in Congress, their own governor, and their own state constitution. This would be a mostly conservative state with conservative values which would be reflected in the laws and constitution they would write. Right now there are some 21 adjoining, northern California counties who are in process of creating the State of Jefferson. They have my full support and I wish them all success.

There are those who believe that this would be the perfect solution. The northern counties break off, and the central and southern parts stay as California. This would be a two state split. It could work, but all the problems of Los Angeles dominating what is left of California would still remain. That isn’t good. But there is a far worse solution. Tim Draper, a Silicon Valley billionaire entrepreneur has come up with a six state split. This is completely moronic. One of the things you have to consider when creating new borders is that they have to stand the test of time. And the logic of Draper’s plan is wrapped in instant gratification. Fortunately it failed to get enough signatures to qualify as a ballot initiative. One huge obvious problem was creating an incredibly rich state by combining San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and leaving the poorest state right next to it made up of drought stricken farm country with a huge rate of unemployment. I’m so glad that initiative failed.

My solution is a three state split. Jefferson in the North, and a perfect split below for the two states of Northern California and Southern California along a straight three county line. If you look at a county map which I have included below in my sources, you will see a perfect straight line on top of the counties of San Luis Obispo, Kern, and San Bernardino. That is where you divide the states of Northern California and Southern California. Southern California would have no control over anything other than their own state. So it wouldn’t matter how many people lived there or how much it grew. They would probably make Los Angeles the state capitol. The northern counties that are now Jefferson are no longer under the thumb of the rest of the state. They could stay rural and small, still retain control of their state, and have decent representation. Their capitol would probably be Reading, the largest city and centrally located in Jefferson. The middle state of Northern California would extend from Fresno to Sacramento for big cities, with the San Francisco Bay Area to the West. Also there would be a good mix of people, coastline, cities, farmland, foothills and the Sierras. More than just what is left over, this would be a manageable and varied territory with reasonably balanced geography, opportunity, and population.

A three state plan would also have less impact in Congress than six states as there would only be four new senators instead of 10, which would be reasonable given the size of the three new states as being comparable to so many other states. The Electoral College and presidential campaigns would change also. For the first time in many years it would be worthwhile for Republican candidates to visit. Jefferson would be safely in the Republican camp, Northern California would still be hopelessly Democratic territory, and Southern California might be up for grabs if Orange County and other GOP counties can compete against LA County. Could be interesting.

I really like my three state split creating Jefferson, Northern California, and Southern California. And that is what we do with California. What do you think?